Corrected by Thepsychoticchef
Chapter 25
Hermann wakes up and finds his head resting on a physics textbook.
Immediately he is frustrated with himself for falling asleep. He also resigns himself to the fact that the human body requires regular rest and he had been reading this book, the way one might read a gripping novel, for the last 8 hours. Sleep was bound to follow in the course of the day.
Now his head hurts. Why should sleeping on a textbook cause him such a headache? He probably twisted something out of joint and he sighs down at the pages of neatly ordered equations and text.
Its all so fascinating, he wishes he could open his mind and simply download all this information. He is so hungry for it.
Well he was hungry, now his head hurts, and he feels like he should go lie down.
It feels like an unusual headache.
No matter, he thinks as he shuts the book and grips the edge of the desk to shove his hands away. He pauses finding his eyes drawn to the sight of his knuckles white and taught on the edge of the desk.
It reminds him of something, but he can't quite understand what.
There is something he meant to do. Something he needs to do. He should be doing it now.
What is it?
Did he have an assignment he had forgotten?
He pushes away from the desk and stands up. Something is off, he thinks as walks to his bed. He feels like he ought to be holding something. Leaning on something.
He sits and stares at his knees. His head aches in a way that is both distant and alarmingly present. His eye twitches.
What was he supposed to be doing?
He feels like he shouldn't be here. It's unsettling. Why shouldn't he be here? This is his room.
There is this pressure... Like some force around his mind. He has a strange errant thought about force fields.
He reaches for a cane, but there is no cane. Why would he reach for that?
Something is pressuring him and walling him in. Something that is not physical. Something mental.
He can't quite put a finger on what this is and a part of him thinks he should get up and get a glass of water. This is far too fanciful. He probably needs more sleep. How banal.
Outside of this 'wall' he feels, or maybe he imagines the feeling... Just beyond there is the vaguest sense of something utterly horrific. Something unexplainable and uninterpretable, something that cannot be quantified or measured.
What is this? What does this mean?
'You would do that for me?'
The words drift up and he cannot understand the torrent that follows. It's blue and violent and overwhelms all sensation. There is fear and there is deep attachment that doesn't make sense at all. The absence of this...He only knows that he lacks the presence of something, or someone, and it feels like walking with a crippled limb, like a leg severed.
He wonders if he stayed up so late that, despite the few hours sleep, he is beginning to hallucinate. He should shut his eyes and not think about the strange ache in his leg and his back that feels miles and miles away. He would go to sleep and not think about this pressure. This mental wall.
A wall.
He goes utterly still, and for a moment it feels like he can't breathe.
Is the wall protecting him or trapping him? He can't quite tell.
He decides he should get up and fetch a glass of water from the kitchen.
But no, he needs to focus. What is this? The edgeless mental block that stands monolithic around his mind. His head throbs and he...he did something. He feels like he did something, or agreed to something. He needs to remember what it is because it feels so important.
He distantly remembers another wall that was built to keep the...
The door beckons him. He should get a glass of water but he doesn't want to move from this spot. He wants to attack this problem like a thorny equation that must be assessed, analyzed, and answered.
He could just be very tired. His mind readily offers up the excuse but he wants to shove that aside for some reason.
Why is he being so stubborn?
His throat is dry. He should get a glass of water and not think about the wall.
The real wall that was built to keep
out
…
He strains for it, and as he reaches desperately for the rest of that sentence, he is once again plunged into azure depths. There is no loss or attachment. There is only screaming and destruction. They are everywhere and they sense him and they want to destroy him even as one of them is dying. They will find him, they will hunt him, they will kill him.
Oh god.
He had collapsed against the bed and the door is beckoning again.
Without even thinking, he stands up and leaves the room.
Disoriented, he enters the Kwoon room to practice his staff fighting.
Wait a second.
Confusion reigns and something is wrong, because he did something and there was a person and a thing he can't seem to think about and he feels the need to leave, but he is so confused.
He is grabbing a staff and stepping towards a sand bag, because that's what he came here to do, even though the whole scene feels twisted ever so slightly on its axis.
He attacks the punching bag savagely and feels satisfaction at the sound of his blows landing. He is resting too much weight on his left leg. Why is that?
What is it that he needs to remember so badly.
Newton
Who is Newton?
So the drift is pretty weird...we're back to the slow burn model. Hermann's a little more with it though, what a precious bae. They just need to get their shit together dude.